Army has spent $120 million so far to rehab munitions site

A crew works on dismantling a Ball Powder building at Badger Army Ammunition Plant in Baraboo. The crew will remove all metal for scrap and any asbestos before it gets knocked down. The land will be used by the Ho Chunk Nation for their bison. Credit: Joe Koshollek

Town of Sumpter - Congressman Bob Kastenmeier called it a "casualty of peace" when the U.S. Army announced in 1975 that a sprawling munitions factory south of Baraboo would be closing.

Its fate was hotly debated for years, but officials eventually agreed to tear most of it down, clean up the pollution and turn over the 7,275 acres for nonmilitary purposes.

In the past five years, the Army has spent nearly $120 million to prepare the property, said Joan Kenney, the Army's contracting representative.

The biggest recipient will be the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, which is getting 3,387 acres.

On Friday, Gov. Jim Doyle and other dignitaries will visit the shuttered Badger Army Ammunition Plant for a ceremony where the Army officially will turn over about half of the property to the DNR.

The facility was once the country's largest ammunition factory, and during World War II, employment totaled more than 10,000.

The Army and the DNR say that the rest of the land will go to the DNR by 2014, though some cleanup will continue after that. The state is not paying the Army for the land.

Eventually, land once used to make rocket propellant and gunpowder will connect popular Devil's Lake State Park to the Wisconsin River.

It will be known as the Sauk Prairie Recreation Area.

Some of the land already has changed hands. In 2004, the U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center started taking ownership of land that eventually will total about 2,100 acres. It's using the land to graze cattle and conduct research.

The Ho-Chunk Nation is receiving more than 1,500 acres to raise and market bison. The local sanitary district is getting 164 acres and the Wisconsin Department of Transportation is taking 61 acres for an upgrade of Highway 78.

Plans for use of the Sauk Prairie Recreation Area are still in the works. But DNR officials said that public access won't be allowed until after demolition and cleanup is finished.

Early planning has centered on nonmotorized activities such as hiking. Hunting also is likely, said Craig Karr, a retired DNR employee who returned to work on a limited basis to serve as the DNR's liaison for the project.

It's also likely much of the land will be restored to native prairie and oak savannah - the dominant land form until it began to be farmed in the mid 1800s by German and Swiss immigrants.

"You have to have some imagination," Karr said. "But when you look down the road 20 years from now, this is going to be a fantastic property."

Larry Lloyd, 62, has worked at Badger since 1968. At peak production during the Vietnam War, the plant employed about 5,000 people. Now he is a program manager for the contractor, SpecPro Inc., which is demolishing buildings he once worked in.

"At this point, it's just a fact; it's what's happening," Lloyd said. "In the early stages, it seemed a terrible waste, a terrible shame."

Another former employee, Verlyn Mueller, 72, president and archivist of the Badger History Group, remembered seeing earth moving equipment and hearing his parents worry about the fate of the 80 farm families who were ordered off their land when the site was selected in 1942.

"I disagreed with the government's decision to close it, and I haven't seen any reason to change my mind," Mueller said.

Since 2004, crews have dismantled about 1,000 of the facility's 1,400 buildings. The project has recycled more than 35 million pounds of heavy steel, 4.8 million pounds scrap wood, 575,000 pounds of copper and 500,000 pounds of lead, according to the Army.

Despite the progress, Badger has the look and feel of an industrial ghost town. The biggest and most polluted structures are still standing.

The Army's Kenney says difficult work is ahead to remove contaminants, such as explosives 2,6-DNT and 2,4-DNT, from buildings and sewers. Both are known to cause cancer.

Laura Olah is executive director of Citizens for Safe Water Around Badger. She lives across the highway from the plant and has watched the plume of contaminants in the groundwater spread, despite efforts by the Army to control it.

While Olah is hopeful the Army will clean up Badger, she doesn't think enough emphasis has been placed on spill sites and areas where workers routinely dumped contaminated waste.

Kenney says those areas have been the subject of extensive work.

The Army has been "very responsive," said Eileen Pierce, air and waste leader in the south central region for the DNR.

"You have to remember that the Army can't walk away from this, even after they turn over the land," Pierce said.

"Even if something surfaces later, they are the responsible party in perpetuity."

More photos For more photos from the shuttered Badger Army Ammunition Center, go to jsonline.com/photos

About Lee Bergquist

Lee Bergquist covers environmental issues and is author of "Second Wind: The Rise of the Ageless Athlete."